Alceste, first performed in Vienna in December 1767, was the second salvo in Christoph Willibald Gluck's famous campaign to reform Italian opera seria. Believing that operatic music should serve drama rather than asserting its own presence through virtuosity and ornament, Gluck set out to revive the dramatic ideals of Greek tragedy, and reclaim opera—that "most beautiful of spectacles"—from the performance traditions that had made it "ridiculous and wearisome" (as the composer wrote in his own preface to the score).

The original libretto for Alceste was adapted from Euripides by Calzabigi, a Livornese reform poet who sought to bring French influences into Italian opera. Changes from the play include the omission of the character of Hercules, who helps bring Alceste back from the underworld, focusing the drama instead around Alceste's self-sacrifice, and using a deus ex machina in the finale to bring about a happy ending. He also added two children and two servants to the drama, imitating Pietro Metastasio's habit of casting characters in matched pairs.

In Vienna, Gluck's Italian Alceste was extremely well received, but subsequent productions in Italy fared poorly. In 1776, Gluck and the librettist Marie François du Roullet rewrote the entire work for the Paris Opéra, creating the French version that would eventually supplant the original Italian in the repertory (the Italian version is rarely performed today, although there was a recording made in 1956 with Kirsten Flagstad in the title role). In the process of revision, du Roullet and Gluck turned back to the original Euripides play, reinstating the character of Hercules and thereby lightening the predominantly gloomy mood of the opera. They also completely revised the third act, adding a descent into Hades, a battle with the infernal spirits, and an extended celebratory divertissement at the end, when Alceste and Admetus are reunited. Gluck himself added a good bit of dramatic irony to the libretto.

Though the Italian and French versions differ in substantial ways, they both retain the same essential plot outline: Alceste, the Queen, sacrifices her own life to the gods of the underworld so that her husband's can be spared, but she is eventually spared as well. Most of the differences between the two scores come in the selective elaboration of certain scenes, and in the resolution of the plot. In the Italian version, the god Apollo spared Alceste from her fate, while in the French, Hercules battles the minions of the underworld on her behalf.

Gluck used various musical effects in his drama, such as the monotone chanting of the high priest, agitated or muted string textures, antiphonal effects in the chorus, and sweeping, spacious, arpeggiated figures. In "Non vi turbate, no," when Alceste pleads with the infernal deities, Gluck used the timbre of muted strings and English horns to create pathos. When the infernal powers come to claim Alceste, their music is filled with chromaticism, tremolandos, and a dramatic death knell. The high point of the French version is Alceste's air "Ah! divinités implacables!," in which she defies the inhabitants of the underworld. The air was adapted from an aria in the second act of the Italian version.

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